Beneath the Surface of Normal

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Advocacy Series: Everybody’s Got Something

We all have a Something, a story. We all have a circumstance that challenges our hearts, our health, our happiness. This is how cliches such as “In everyone’s life a little rain must fall,” and “God doesn’t put anything on your shoulders He (She) thinks you can’t handle,”—this is how these conventions, these pep talks, become cliches. They are universal beliefs and often doled out by the well intentioned ad nauseam.

There is an event, an illness, a challenge, a disability in each of our lives, or our loved one’s, that sweeps us away from our intended appointment with “normal” and into foreign landscapes. Often without warning, without training, without preparation our paths pivot, sending us careening into the unknown. Things that happen to other people have happened to us. Stares come our way. We become intimate with vulnerability.

Dizzy at first and with unstable footing, we can’t stand still. Restless. Helpless. Frustrated. But human nature, gut reaction, is survival.

Breathe in, Breath out.

Moment to moment. One day at a time, we chant in our hearts. We glance into the past at what if, but fact cannot be altered into fantasy no matter how strong the desire or denial. We face forward. The inescapable truth of the future hits between the ribs.

Breath in, Breath out.

Our shoulders hunch, flinch, upon the impact of sympathetic pats on the back, accompanied by universal beliefs voiced with aim to sooth and strengthen. The words give the spirit resolve, even company. We are not alone.

Breath in, Breath out.

The chin lifts. The sensation of passive victimization fades, and in its place active realization seeps in, an empowering resolve: the need to do something about our Something.